


i don't have a choice (but i'd still choose you)

by theyellowumbrella



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13119858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyellowumbrella/pseuds/theyellowumbrella
Summary: Vanessa moves to Emmerdale when she's eleven years old, and Charity makes sure nothing is ever the same in her life again.orvanity childhood au bc there are literally no vanity aus and i thought i'd take one for the team





	1. eleven years old

**Author's Note:**

> asdkgdkfsl this is Garbage and i've already got two unfinished vanity aus but. i have no impulse control and i wanted to write it
> 
> this fic is dedicated to the Wonderful, the Brilliant, the Amazing emily, aka @charitywoodfield on tumblr. she literally has to remind me to write this every day and always swaps headcanons with me and is the driving force behind this story actually being available for u to read rn so. u know. thanks b (also i should probably wait for u to wake up and read this in full before publishing but like i said, no impulse control and ur sleeping)

The first thing Vanessa notices about Emmerdale is that it’s cold.

Like, really cold. Like, dead of winter, snowed in, wear all of your hats and scarves and gloves kind of cold — and it’s only August. The sky is a dull grey, with dark clouds hanging overcast. The whole place is just … depressing.

It takes all of five minutes for her to decide she hates it.

Their new house is small and shabby and falling to pieces. It’s not like their old house was a castle or anything — far from it, actually, what with the leaky taps and the peeling wallpaper and the mould slowly growing on the bathroom ceiling — but Vanessa swears it was like Buckingham Palace compared to this dump.

Her mum swears she’ll grow to love it, that as soon as they start putting their stuff from the old house in that it’ll start to feel more like home, but Vanessa doubts it. That’s what she always says — it’s what she said about having to live without Dad, and that’s not felt any better even though it’s been months now.

She wraps herself tighter in her coat, keeping her gloved hands shoved in her pockets. It’s her first day at her new school, and even though Mum promised that she’d give her a lift, she got called in to do the early shift and now here Vanessa is, freezing to death at the bus stop, trying to avoid all of the other kids.

There’s two of them, huddled together in the opposite corner from Vanessa. They’re chatting quietly between themselves, obviously friends, and Vanessa silently thanks them for their disinterest in the new kid.

She spares a glance at the bus timetable tacked onto the inside of the shelter. 8:22. She’d been at the bus stop for five past, and even as time drags on, she knows she can’t have been there for fifteen minutes yet. Probably still a while to go yet.

She waits another few minutes in silence before she hears the commotion. It’s coming from up by the cafe, the sound of kids shouting and shrieking. Vanessa turns to find the source, and is met with the sight of three kids mucking about. There’s a boy, slightly older, walking with his hands in his pockets. He looks about ready to kill the two girls beside him, who are standing on either side of him, singing something.

The second thing Vanessa notices about Emmerdale is Charity Dingle, and she’s intrigued.

One of the girls is blonde, the kind of blonde that Vanessa can just tell is dyed, even from this distance, and the other is brunette. They’re strangely in sync, both of them throwing their heads back and miming singing into a microphone at the same time. As they approach the bus stop, Vanessa can see the smile edging on the ends of his lips, like he’s irritated by their antics but used to them enough by now that he just thinks they’re amusing.

The girls come hurtling into the bus shelter, choking on their laughter. The boy is still walking at a steady pace behind them, obviously in no hurry to catch up with them. The brunette one almost crashes into Vanessa, laughing so hard that she obviously doesn’t notice the other person there when she spins around on her heel.

“Oh! Sorry!” she exclaims, still in a fit of giggles. The blonde has calmed down a bit, although she’s still grinning away about whatever they were joking about. She’s looking straight at Vanessa now, in a way that makes her shift uncomfortably. It’s almost like her gaze is burning a hole straight through Vanessa.

“S’alright,” she says, giving the brunette a small shrug. She looks back at the bus timetable, wishing desperately to go back in time and put a watch on so she could tell how long she has to wait for this bus. Or, alternatively, wishing she could go back in time and convince her dad not to walk out, leaving them practically destitute and inadvertently forcing them to move to this cold and dreary village.

“Who are you, then?” the blonde asks. Her arms are crossed across her chest, like she’s squaring up for a fight — almost like she automatically expects Vanessa to have a problem with her.

Vanessa contemplates whether or not she should respond for a few seconds before she makes her decision. She stands up straighter, holding her head higher than before. “Vanessa. I’m new.”

The girl’s eyes scan over her from head to toe with scrutiny. Her eyes are narrowed as her gaze sweeps across Vanessa’s every pore, as she judges what seems to be every little thing about Vanessa and more. “Yeah,” she says. “I can tell.”

“ _ Charity, _ ” the brunette hisses under her breath. She elbows the blonde —  _ Charity  _ — in the side, before putting on a smile that is far too big for this early in the morning. “I’m Chas,” she announces. “What year are you in?”

“Year Six.” She keeps her head down, eyes glued on the ground, shoulders hunched over. She’s trying her hardest to convey how little she wants to chat without having to actually say it and be rude — it probably wouldn’t do to start off on the wrong foot and make enemies on the first day.

“Oh, cool. So’s our Charity.” Vanessa looks up for a second then, eyes meeting with the girl in question’s for a brief second, before she looks back down. “I’m only Year Five.” She looks at Vanessa expectantly, as if she’s waiting for a reply, and when she doesn’t say anything, shoots an awkward look at Charity and the boy. “Our Cain’s a Year Eight, though.” She nods towards the boy, as if to explain who she’s talking about. He doesn’t react, just gives them a bored look.

“Right,” Vanessa says. “So … you’re all brother and sister, then?”

Charity scrunches her face up in disdain, while Chas seems to be just happy to be getting a response. “No, no,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean, Cain’s my brother, but Charity’s our cousin.”

“Well,” Charity says, tilting her head to the side. “Our dads are cousins.”

Chas grits her teeth and narrows her eyes at her. “Which makes us cousins.”

Charity just rolls her eyes, as if this is a discussion the two of them have had multiple times. “Whatever you say.”

There’s something about watching them, the way they interact so easily, that Vanessa finds almost addicting. It’s nothing she’s ever had before; Mum has no brothers or sisters to give her any cousins, and even if Dad did, he didn’t talk to any of his family. There were never any cousins, any aunts or uncles and nieces and nephews for Vanessa to have that sort of bond with.

She supposes her mum and dad used to get on quite well, but then on the other hand, it can’t have been that well if Dad was willing to walk out on them without looking back. She thought that they loved each other, that even if they never really showed it, they were happy. She was wrong.

The bus pulls up then, interrupting Vanessa from her thoughts. She follows behind the two boys that were at the bus stop first and tries not to notice Charity’s gaze burning into the back of her head.

* * *

The new class is … interesting, to say the least.

She’s sat at a table with two girls called Rhona and Leyla and, lo and behold, Charity. Rhona and Leyla are directly opposite them while her and Charity sit together, close enough that when Charity stands up to go and sharpen her pencil, she brushes Vanessa on the way. Vanessa tries to ignore the way it makes her feel when Charity’s hair accidentally brushes Vanessa’s cheek — like her stomach’s just tumbled taken the drop down the highest rollercoaster in Britain.

Rhona and Leyla are nice, she finds. They’re already friends, close but not so close that it makes Vanessa feel like she’s sitting on the outside of a door she’ll never find the key for. It makes her feel hopeful, being sat with them — they’re so kind, she’s almost sure they’ll be her friends.

The thing is, though. The thing is that for some reason, she can’t get her mind off of Charity, whose presence beside her is now unavoidable. She’s not sure what it is, but there’s just something about her that just demands attention at all times, even when she’s doing nothing.

She’s always cracking jokes — usually at the expense of others, to be fair — or answering back, and it’s just impossible not to watch. She’s not paid Vanessa much mind since their meeting at the bus stop, other than an exaggerated sigh and roll of her eyes when the teacher first told Vanessa where she’d be sitting.

She doesn’t actually speak to Vanessa directly until she’s been at the school for what must be two weeks. Vanessa’s sort of settled in by then — settled in her friendships with Rhona and Leyla, settled in her dump of a house, settled in the fact that her dad isn’t coming back — and although she still finds her eyes wandering to Charity, her thoughts have mostly been elsewhere since the first few days of no contact.

“Oi, new girl,” she hisses one day, when they’re supposed to be doing a maths test. The class is completely silent, but Charity’s voice is quiet enough not to attract any attention. “What did you get for number three?”

Vanessa widens her eyes at Charity — the first thing she’s said to her in two weeks, and it’s trying to cheat? She can barely believe it. “Do it yourself!” she whispers back, but it’s a little bit too loud, because the teacher raises her head. She makes eye contact with Vanessa, but looks back down at her desk with just a roll of her eyes when Vanessa sends her a friendly smile.

Charity sighs. “For God’s sake, you’re already on number nine — just tell me what you got.”

Vanessa looks around the class quickly just to check nobody’s listening before leaning in closer. “I am  _ not _ helping you cheat.”

“Jesus Christ, buttercup, they’re not gonna bang you up for telling me the answer to a question.”

Vanessa’s about to respond, but the teacher cuts her off. “Vanessa, Charity, is there a problem?”

Charity leans back in her seat and rolls her eyes. It’s so effortless, the rebellious energy that she just exudes at all times. It’s intoxicating. Vanessa, on the other hand, is completely panicking. She smiles almost manically at the teacher, all teeth bared, and shakes her head.

“No, no, everything’s fine! Sorry, Miss.”

She lets it go with a stern look, and Vanessa goes back to trying to answer the questions on her page. Charity sits back up properly in her seat, twirling her pencil around in her fingers. “Freak,” she whispers to Vanessa, but when she turns to look, there’s a smile twitching on the end of her lips that makes Vanessa think maybe she isn’t a hundred percent serious.

 

After that, her and Charity have a sort of — well. She doesn’t want to call it a friendship, because it’s  _ not, _ but it’s something of an … understanding. An understanding that school is boring, and even though Vanessa’s friends with Rhona and Leyla and thinks they’re genuinely lovely people, it can be a bit dull just sitting either in silence or listening to Leyla tell some long winded story.

So, they pass notes between each other and share looks when Leyla says something a little bit weird, and Vanessa helps Charity with her maths in return for Charity not asking her to tell her the answers on every test (of course, this doesn’t actually stop her, but Vanessa’s sure with enough pushing, it’ll make a change). The notes that Charity passes her are usually full of insults, whether aimed at Vanessa herself or the other people in the class, whereas Vanessa’s usually include little drawings.

Their understanding, however, comes to an abrupt end when Charity accidentally becomes too obvious in her note-passing one Thursday morning. She slides the slip of paper, torn from the back of her exercise book, across the table to Vanessa, and when Vanessa fails to notice it — too engrossed in the adventures of the Pevensie siblings and Aslan — she smacks her hand on the table, apparently alerting the teacher.

She looks to their table, and when she eyes the little scrap of paper on the desk, Vanessa swears her eyes twinkle. “Have you got something you’d like to share with the class, Charity?” she asks, one eyebrow raised. Charity reaches out to snatch it back, but the teacher gets there before she can and slides it off the table.

“‘Look at Erin, she’s a right cretin, isn’t it?’” the teacher reads from the paper. Vanessa visibly cringes, putting her head in her hands, whereas Charity just sits up a little straighter, jutting her chin out like she refuses to take the embarrassment. It’s almost admirable, really, how she doesn’t react badly to having her private thoughts shared to such a large amount of people — including the girl she was slagging off, who’s now crying into her best friend’s shoulder.

The teacher moves Charity across the class, and they stop talking altogether, because an understanding is not a friendship, and that’s that.

* * *

“So, Vanessa,” Leyla starts. Vanessa looks up from her page, keeping her pencil rested between her fingers. “Have you seen anyone that’s caught your fancy?” Rhona’s ears perk up at the change in conversation, and she abandons her book in favour of what she’s sure is going to be an extremely telling conversation with the newest addition to their little friend group. “Y’know, lad wise?”

Vanessa’s eyes are automatically drawn to Charity, sitting across the room. She’s hunched over her exercise book, pencil scribbling away a mile a minute as she actually does work for what Vanessa swears must be the first time since she moved to this school. She’s maintaining a steady conversation with the girl sat next to her, laughing at her jokes and obviously supplying some of her own, if the girl’s reaction is anything to go off of.

It’s captivating. She finds herself being sucked in, eyes following the way that Charity brushes a lock of hair behind her ear, the way that she throws her head back when she laughs at something that’s particularly funny. There’s something about Charity that just … draws her in. Something she can’t quite put her finger on, that’s been there ever since she first saw her mucking around with Chas on her first day.

It’s almost like there’s a piece of string tied around Vanessa on one end and Charity on the other, except Charity’s not been let in on the fact yet. It feels like she can only move so far away before she’s being pulled right back and is being faced with how her tummy starts to feel a bit funny whenever Charity laughs or answers back in class.

The idea makes her feel a bit sick, so she pushes it to the back of her head.

“Vanessa?” Leyla repeats. She snaps out of her daze quick enough to see the look that Leyla and Rhona share, the way their eyes flicker between Vanessa and Charity as if they’re in on some secret that Vanessa doesn’t know yet.

“Oh, sorry. What did you ask, again?”

“Just if you’d seen any lads you fancy yet,” she says. She’s smiling but there’s something there that makes Vanessa feel uneasy, something to do with the fact that she obviously expects Vanessa to say yes.

She just shrugs. “No, not really.”

“Oh, right,” Leyla says, and then launches into a ten minute rant about David in the other class, and how he’s so nice and funny and how he walked her home from school the other day and held her hand the whole way there, and the subject is dropped just as easily as it first came up.


	2. thirteen years old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charity and Vanessa bond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks, as per, to emily - @charitywoodfield on tumblr - for listening to me rant about this without ever writing it, for reading it as i'm writing it to keep me on track, for forcing me to actually keep going w it. ur the best

By the time Vanessa’s hit thirteen, she hasn’t spoken to Charity properly in well over a year. They still say hello in passing — well, Vanessa says hello and Charity rolls her eyes, as if that’s an appropriate response — and generally acknowledge each other’s existence, but things sort of went dead after they got moved seats in Year Six.

She still speaks to Chas, and gets the lowdown on Charity’s life through that. There’s something almost thrilling in hearing little snippets of her life, of getting to know tiny little snatches of things about her. Most of the time, they’re not even interesting — Charity was such a bitch today, or Charity got in a fight with her mum and dad, or Charity kissed that new boy — but sometimes, there’s that little bit of information that slips through the cracks that she reckons Chas didn’t mean to let out.

Which is how she finds out Charity is pregnant.

And, really, it’s not that big of a deal, to be honest — the part about Chas telling her, that is, not the part about her being pregnant, because Vanessa thinks that probably is quite a big deal — because it’s not as if Charity could hide being pregnant for very long, and everyone else is bound to find out soon enough, but it almost feels like a confidence is being shared with her. Even if Charity isn’t actually the one sharing it, it makes her feel just that little bit warmer inside.

All those unresolved feelings Vanessa’s harboured for Charity ever since their not-friendship when they were eleven are still there, lingering about inside Vanessa like some ticking time bomb that’s just waiting to explode. As she’s gotten older, she’s had brief realisations — little moments, like watching Carol Vorderman every night on  _ Countdown _ and getting butterflies in her stomach, or passing a pretty girl on the street and blushing profusely when she smiles at her — that she’s pushed down countless times. Realisations that she reckons probably wouldn’t have come about if it weren’t for Charity.

And it’s not that she fancies her — it’s  _ not _ — it’s just that … well, Charity’s gorgeous. There’s no denying that, gay or straight. Vanessa reckons she’d probably  _ have _ to be gorgeous to get knocked up at thirteen, although she knows there are boys out there who’d have it away with anything that moved. Charity’s gorgeous and Vanessa has eyes, for heaven’s sake; she’s  _ bound _ to notice her.

And okay, maybe she does stare at her a lot, but it’s not her fault that Charity’s just so good at catching her attention. Her laugh is loud and everywhere she goes she demands attention, good or bad, and she’s always able to get it. So no, Vanessa doesn’t fault herself for staring too long, or maybe letting her eyes linger just a bit on Charity’s back when they’re getting changed for gym.

Charity, to her credit, stays at school for most of the nine months she’s pregnant. She stays in class, causing disruptions and general mayhem, every day until she’s eight months gone and the doctor deems her unable to do any actual work. Which, she protests, she doesn’t actually do in the first place, but he’s insistent.

Vanessa doesn’t see her again for at least two months after that. Chas tells her on the bus when she has the baby — a girl, she says, absolutely beautiful — but she doesn’t say anything about her again after that. And then one day, maybe two weeks after Chas told her about the baby, Charity’s back at the bus stop looking sort of dead.

Still gorgeous, but dead.

Then again, Vanessa supposes, she did just have a baby, and babies do cry a lot and probably demand more attention than Charity herself, so she’s bound to be a bit tired. Except, she thinks when she stops to actually think about it, Charity doesn’t actually seem like someone who’s just had a baby.

Sure, her eyes have dark circles underneath them and her body is in that uncomfortable stage where her skin is still stretched from her bump but there’s nothing underneath it anymore, and she does look tired, but other than that, there’s nothing.

She’s back at school two weeks after having a baby, for crying out loud. Vanessa thought that she wouldn’t see her again, not now that she’ll be at home all the time, caring for it. But Chas hadn’t mentioned it ever again, not after the original birth announcement, and so Vanessa thinks Charity probably gave it up.

Which is fine. In fact, Vanessa probably thinks it’s for the best — from what she’s seen, Charity can hardly look after herself, never mind another human.

Everyone at school avoids her like the plague. She sits on her own in every class, everyone having shuffled about seats in her absence, and eats alone at lunch. Chas sits with her for the first few days, but it’s not long before people are talking about her, too, and Charity must put her out of her misery, tell her to go and hang out with her friends, make her mark on Year 7 before it’s too late.

Charity loses the spark that she once had. She used to be the life and soul, loud and proud and in your face, whereas now she’s quiet, withdrawn. She sticks to the corners and hides away at the back of the class and does her work. It’s horrible to watch — it’s like watching the life drain out of someone.

So, Vanessa does what she does best: she tries. She gets her lunch and tells Rhona and Leyla that she’ll be over soon, that she has something to do, before she heads outside to try and find whatever spot Charity’s deemed hers. Vanessa’s spotted her sitting underneath a tree for the past few days, the kind that’s big and strong and leaves a big shadow on the ground.

Lo and behold, that’s where she finds Charity, sat with her head against the tree and her legs sprawled out across the grass, bag dumped beside her and half-eaten sandwich on her lap. She looks sad, and tired, and everything that Charity hates. It makes Vanessa feel sick.

“Alright?” she asks, crouching to sit beside her. Charity looks up then, snaps out of a daydream Vanessa hadn’t realised she was having, and sighs.

“What do you want?” she asks, but there’s none of her usual bite to it.

“Thought you could do with some company.”

Charity turns up her nose and sneers. “I’m alright, thanks.”

Before, it would have hurt. Before, Vanessa probably would have walked off quickly and never even considered speaking to Charity again. But now … now it’s just sad.

Instead of letting Charity know that she thinks that, though, and risk getting literally killed — even if Charity is changed now, there’s no doubt she could maul Vanessa within seconds — she just says, “You’re not exactly spoiled for choice, are you?”

She rolls her eyes. “What, is this my punishment? Have one baby out of w edlock and get stuck with the goody two-shoes?”

Vanessa doesn’t reply in favour of taking a bite of her sandwich. She just ignores Charity’s comment, washing down the sandwich with a sip of water, and waiting for Charity to settle down enough to allow her to speak. Eventually, Charity must give in, because she sighs and starts eating her own sandwich again, and they sit in silence until they’re both finished eating.

“So,” Vanessa starts, at least five minutes after they’re both finished. She’s playing with the daisies that surround them, threading them through each other to make a daisy chain. “You gave her up, then?”

Charity gives her a sharp look. “Yeah. I did. You here to have a go at me for that an’ all? Because I could really do without it.”

“No,” Vanessa says. She tugs another daisy out of the ground, trying to busy herself so she doesn’t have to look Charity in the eye. “No, I think what you did was … was really brave.”

“Brave?” Charity snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“No, I - I mean it. I mean, you knew that you wouldn’t be able to give her the best life, so you gave her up so she could have it. What’s not brave about that?”

Charity laughs. Vanessa looks up to find her staring down at the grass, making a daisy chain of her own. Her hair’s fallen from where she had it tucked behind her ear, now covering her face completely. Vanessa’s heart lurches. She looks beautiful.

“That’s not why I did it,” Charity says, her voice quiet. “I mean, I do want her to have a good life … I do. But mostly, I just didn’t want a baby.” She makes a little sound then, somewhere between a laugh and a choked sob, and shrugs. “I mean, how awful does that make me? I held her. I held my baby in my arms and … and I didn’t feel anything.”

“It doesn’t make you awful, Charity,” Vanessa says, but she’s not sure, if she’s honest. She can’t imagine that — holding her own child and feeling nothing. But then again, it’s different with Charity. For starters, she’s only a kid herself.

“Yeah, it does.” Charity’s voice is firm, like she’s made her mind up already. “She was gorgeous. Lovely brown hair, blue eyes. And I didn’t feel anything but bad for her, having me as a mum. How’s that, eh? I’m sending my baby out into a horrible, scary world without the only person she’s known for the last nine months, and I’m feeling bad for myself.”

Vanessa wants to reach out, maybe put a hand on Charity’s, or sit closer to her, but she feels stuck to her spot. “She’ll be fine,” she says, even though she knows there’s a good chance she won’t be. “I’m sure she will. They only let good, stable families adopt. She’ll end up with one of them and she’ll be fine.”

Charity looks up at her then, tucking her hair back behind her ear. She looks so young, so vulnerable. Vanessa feels her stomach doing that thing again, the thing that makes her feel like looking at Charity and committing it all to memory is the most important thing she could be doing at any given moment. The thing that makes her feel like she’s just taken a dive off a cliff, like she’s just ridden the loop de loop.

“You reckon?” she asks, her voice soft, quiet. She’s so different from the Charity Vanessa’s observed over the years, it’s mental.

It’s scary, actually, so Vanessa nods her head and gives Charity her best smile. “Yeah. I do.” There’s a nice silence for a minute, where they just exist together, making daisy chains and enjoying the rare sunny weather, before Vanessa speaks again. “You know, I never thought I’d live to see the day where Charity Dingle actually lets me be nice to her.”

Charity scowls, all evidence of the conversation they just had quickly gone from her expression. “I’ve just had a baby,” she reminds her. “My hormones are all over the place. I’ll be back to normal soon.”

“Good to know.”

When she’s done with her daisy chain, she drops it on Charity’s lap without a word. Charity puts her own down, lifting up Vanessa’s and sizing it up, resting it gently on top of her head to see if it’ll sit there. While she’s fitting it across her hair, Vanessa gets up, pulling her bag on. The bell’s bound to ring any minute now, and she did promise Rhona and Leyla she’d be back, so she figures it’s probably time to make her appearances.

Charity’s face falls just that little bit when she gets up, although she quickly masks it with her usual expression of general disdain. 

“Same time tomorrow, yeah?” Vanessa asks, because it feels like her skin is physically itching to put a smile back on Charity’s face, and she’s glad she does because Charity gives her the gentle kind of look that makes her feel like she’s eleven again and seeing her from across the village, confused about why her heart’s beating that bit faster.

“Yeah, whatever,” Charity says, but her face betrays her bored tone.

Vanessa spares her one last look before she goes back in, and the last thing she sees is Charity Dingle sat leaning against a tree, daisy chain crown framing her head like a halo and the smallest of smiles on her face.

Vanessa reckons that could be the last thing she ever sees and she’d be okay with it.

* * *

They eat together every day after that. Vanessa gets her lunch and meets Charity outside by their tree, where they sit and eat together. Sometimes, Charity fills the silence with inane chatter — what she did last night, how Cain’s so annoying, how Lisa’s cooked the same thing for tea three times this week — and sometimes she doesn’t say anything at all. But then there are other times, much, much rarer times, where she’ll go all quiet and bring her knees up to her chin and talk about the other stuff.

The other stuff, of course, being the baby she handed over all too easily and the parents that want nothing to do with her and the way it feels like every time she leaves the house every eye is on her.

Vanessa never really knows what to say then, never knows what’s too much and what’s not enough. Charity’s so different from everyone else she’s ever met, and in those moments it shows the most. When Vanessa tries to put her hand over Charity’s, rest it there to let her know she’s alright, Charity snatches it away as if she’s been scalded, and yet other times, it feels like Charity’s almost seeking physical contact with her.

Only dull contact, mind — brushing arms and knocking shoulders and legs pressed against each other when they’re sitting down. Still, she can’t help but feel like Charity’s trying to find any scrap of normal contact she can get, clawing at it desperately because she’s afraid it’ll disappear if she doesn’t try hard enough to keep it. Charity’s so used to everything else — the kissing, the touching, the hands that wander places they shouldn’t on a thirteen year old girl, on a  _ child  _ — that she sees the opportunity for something so normal, so mundane, and she lunges for it, tries her hardest to replicate it whenever she can.

So, Vanessa says nothing when Charity purposefully goes to pick the same daisy as her and their fingers brush, or when Charity sits herself down just that bit too close to Vanessa, or when Charity leans in just that bit too close when she’s saying something a little bit scandalous, like she’s sharing a confidence. It doesn’t do anything to quell the feelings she’s been developing for Charity, the way that her stomach lurches every time Charity smiles, but it feels almost like her duty to help Charity normalise this stuff.

Vanessa’s still not sure if she’d call them friends, but they start spending more and more time together with each passing day, and Rhona and Leyla always tease her when she leaves to spend time with her, and her mum keeps asking when she’s going to get to meet the famous Charity, and when Charity’s throwing herself down next to Vanessa on the bus and telling her all about her day, it feels an awful lot like a friendship.


	3. fourteen years old - part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things ... develop between the girls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow two chapters in two days ! we love an icon

They’re friends for a good seven months before Charity ever invites Vanessa back. They get off at the same stop every day and part ways at the cafe, Charity heading off back to Wishing Well and Vanessa to the hole that she calls home. It’s fine by Vanessa — sure, she’s curious about Charity’s living situation, but sometimes she thinks maybe they’re not actually as close as she feels like they are, so she doesn’t hold out any hope.

And then one day, they’re getting on the bus and making the walk up to the cafe, and Vanessa’s trying to remember whether or not her mum’s on the afternoon shift or not, when all of a sudden, Charity stops. It takes a minute for Vanessa to realise that Charity’s voice isn’t following her, and when she does, she turns to see Charity leaning against the cafe, looking effortlessly cool and heartbreakingly beautiful.

“What are you waiting for?” Vanessa calls out, brow furrowing when Charity just smiles.

“Are you coming, or what?” she asks. If anything, that just confuses Vanessa even  _ more, _ and it must show in her face, because Charity rolls her eyes and looks at Vanessa expectantly. “Come on, I know you’ve been gagging for an invite, and I need help with my biology, so …” Vanessa’s blushing, but she’s walking back to the cafe, back to Charity, and following her down the road to Wishing Well.

“I have  _ not _ been ‘gagging for an invite,’” Vanessa objects, keeping her eyes on the road ahead of her, on anything but Charity. Their arms are brushing constantly, the two of them crammed close together on the side of the road, and Vanessa’s trying her hardest not to notice it, not to hyperfocus on every little movement Charity makes.

“Oh, come on, Ness, who d’you think you’re fooling?” Charity says, wearing the wicked smile that’s second nature to her so naturally. It’s not cruel, though, although Vanessa suspects not long ago, she would have mistaken it for that. Charity’s just … weird, she’s found out. She doesn’t know how to be a kid, how to make and keep friends like everyone else. It’s charming, in its own way.

“I’ll turn around and go home now,” Vanessa threatens, but she knows she won’t, knows she would never, knows she couldn’t even if she wanted to. It’s awful, the way that she feels almost like a slave to Charity. She’s under her influence, that’s for sure — if Charity says jump, she knows she’ll ask how high every time.

“You wouldn’t dream of it, babe,” Charity says, grin ridiculously wide, and Vanessa’s so sick of trying to pretend that her stomach doesn’t flutter at the casual pet names, at the way Charity will be so affectionate with her without even noticing, but she knows there’s no way she could face up to what it means.

They walk in silence after that. Vanessa doesn’t have anything to say — not anything she’d ever dare tell Charity, anyway — and Charity’s obviously decided she’s in one of her quiet moods, and it’s not a point she ever thought she’d be at in her life, but she’s surprisingly okay with it.

When they finally reach Wishing Well, Charity pauses at the door, hand rested on the doorknob. “Prepare yourself,” she says, a tiny smile forming on her lips, and it feels like she’s being let into a part of Charity’s life that nobody else gets to see. It fills her with love and warmth, and just confirms that she’d do anything to keep Charity in her life, no matter in what capacity. “Welcome to the mad house,” she says as she opens the door and they step inside.

It’s not the first time she’s been to Wishing Well — Chas invited her over, once, when her and Cain were staying with their uncle Zak for the holidays, but that was before Charity had moved in — but it feels almost like an entirely different place.

Chas and Cain are already there — Chas stretched out across the sofa, Cain on the floor leaning against it, flipping through a comic — and Sam’s sat on the seat, legs kicked up on the coffee table and eyes on the telly. Lisa’s busying about the kitchen, dumping teabags in mugs and putting the kettle on to boil again, whereas Zak’s sat in the other chair reading his newspaper. There’s a steady hum of chatter filling the room, making it feel even warmer and fuller than it did before.

It feels like a proper  _ home. _ It’s a quality that Vanessa’s shabby little house unfortunately doesn’t share, although she thinks maybe that has to do with the fact that it’s just her and her mum up there, skirting around the fact that there’s always someone missing beside them on the sofa, or at the dinner table, or in the garden.

“Alright?” Charity calls out, dumping her bag on the floor. She hangs her coat on the back of one of the chairs surrounding the dinner table, nodding towards it to prompt Vanessa to do the same. She takes hers off sheepishly, resting it over Charity’s and trying not to imagine that maybe it’ll smell of the perfume Charity always wears when she picks it up again later.

“Alright, love,” Lisa says, not looking up from where she’s stirring a teabag around in a mug. “Don’t go upstairs yet, I’ve got a brew on.”

“Best make that two,” Charity says, kicking her shoes off. Vanessa follows suit, leaving her bag by the door beside Charity’s and her shoes next to hers. For a fleeting moment, she lets herself think that their stuff looks nice together. That she wouldn’t mind looking at that every day.

Lisa looks up, obviously confused, and the smile that comes across her face when she notices Vanessa, standing awkwardly by Charity, is enough to make Vanessa beam. “Oh, hi, Vanessa love,” she says, wearing that motherly smile that she does best. “Didn’t see you there. Brew?”

“Erm, yeah, thanks.”

“Let me guess,” Charity says, eyebrow raised. “Milk, two sugars?” The blush that creeps up Vanessa’s neck answers for her. It’s not even embarrassing, not really, it’s just the way Charity knows her so well after such little time.

They hang about downstairs until Lisa’s done with their brews, and as soon as the mugs have been handed over, Charity’s shooting up the stairs and Vanessa’s hastily following behind. She doesn’t say anything about how they left their bags downstairs with all of their biology work in it, just follows Charity into her bedroom and lets herself revel in the fact that she’s finally getting to see what it looks like.

It’s just like a normal room, really, with posters all over the walls and an unmade bed and a bedside table piled high with clutter, but there’s something that feels so wonderful about it, because it’s  _ not _ just any other room, it’s Charity’s.

Charity puts on a CD of some band Vanessa’s never heard of and lies on her bed. Vanessa perches on the edge but Charity just lets out a laugh and tugs her back so she’s lying on it too. Vanessa shifts herself, so her and Charity are both lying side by side, feet rested on the headboard and heads together down by the bottom of the bed.

Charity’s singing along to the music quietly, putting on a funny voice that imitates the lead singer’s, and she laughs when Vanessa laughs, and it’s the kind of moment Vanessa craves when it comes to Charity. They bicker and they argue and they fight almost constantly, even though it makes Vanessa’s blood run cold every time they do at the thought that maybe Charity won’t want her to come crawling back next time, but in between spats they have these moments.

Moments where it’s like they’re the only people in the world, or at least the only ones who matter, anyway. Vanessa knows it’s cheesy, knows Charity probably doesn’t feel the same, but it puts her heart at rest nonetheless, because if they’re the only ones who matter, then Vanessa knows that it definitively does  _ not _ matter that she thinks she probably does have a bit of a (massive) crush on Charity.

It feels like they’ve been lying there for ages when Charity finally turns to face her, but it can only have been a few minutes. She’s staring at Vanessa so intently, so full on. Vanessa wants to look away but she can’t. There’s determination in Charity’s eyes, like she’s made up her mind on something and she’s damned if she isn’t going through with it.

And then it happens.

Her hand comes up and curls around Vanessa’s jaw, tucking the fallen strands of hair behind her ear in the process. Vanessa’s breathless, scared, can’t move. This could easily just be another Charity thing, something else weird that she doesn’t get isn’t normal for other kids, something that she’ll laugh off in a minute like it never happened and will accidentally leave Vanessa in the lurch.

But then she leans in, and Vanessa can feel her breath tickling her face — it smells like the spearmint chewing gum she nicked out of Vanessa’s bag on the bus and the brew she’d just been drinking — and then,  _ oh, _ lips are pressed to hers and it’s everything she’s been trying not to imagine for the past three years and —

And it’s all a bit much, if she’s being honest. She’s trying to catalogue it all — the way that Charity’s mouth feels against hers, warm and soft and like it’s meant to be there; the way Charity’s hand is tangled in her hair like they’ve done this before; the way it feels to finally have this pressure lifted off her chest, to not have to wonder what it would be like to be in this exact situation anymore.

But then she realises — this is  _ Charity.  _ Her best friend Charity, the very straight, very boy-mad, teenage mum Charity. And sure, it’s not like she hasn’t wondered if Charity could also be a little bit … other-way inclined, what with all of the staring she does at the other girls in P.E., but Vanessa figured that was just … Charity being Charity.

So, she pulls away and instantly regrets it, because she misses the warmth and the comfort that there was when Charity was pressed against her. It’s not like it was even her first kiss or anything — she’s kissed a few boys before, at parties or on dares and there’s no forgetting that time she snogged Adam Barton in the middle of the Christmas dance because Victoria was dancing with some other lad and Vanessa had spied Charity chatting someone up in the corner — just that it was with Charity.

“What are you doing?” she asks when she pulls away, trying her best to keep her voice level. She sits up, crossing her legs and wrapping her arms around her body, almost like she’s trying to protect herself.

Charity sits up too, but she doesn’t look upset that Vanessa’s pulled away, just confused. Her brow is furrowed, eyes clouded over in confusion. “Why’d you pull away?”

“I — what?”

“Why’d you pull away?” Charity repeats. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Vanessa can feel her face heat up, and averts all eye contact with Charity. She looks up at the ceiling, looks anywhere but at Charity, because she knows she won’t be able to handle looking Charity in the eye for this conversation. “Why would you — what? Why would you think that?”

Charity rolls her eyes. “C’mon Ness, I know you fancy me,” she says. “I mean, I’m not blind. I’ve seen you staring.”

In that moment, Vanessa has never wanted to be buried alive more. This is literally her worst nightmare come to life. God, this is probably why Charity invited her over — to take the piss out of her. That’s probably what their whole friendship has been, actually. The thought makes her want to die even more, the idea that this whole thing has been a farce, that she’s been putting so much into a friendship that might not even be real.

“I - I don’t know what you’re … I don’t. Honest.”

Charity must notice her horror because she shakes her head. “No, Ness, it’s not — I’m not upset or anything. I mean, I’ve known you fancied me for years — probably before you knew you fancied me.”

“Charity, I - I  _ don’t, _ ” she’s somehow able to choke out, but she can hear it, knows it’s not convincing.

“I’m not mad or nothing,” Charity explains. She moves forward, resting her hand on Vanessa’s knee. She flinches, body withdrawing at the touch automatically, still in shock. She sees a flicker of hurt flash over Charity’s face before it goes back to normal, and feels her heart break just that little bit more. Here she’s been, trying her hardest to help Charity normalise physical contact and yet now she’s pulling away from the sort of contact Charity’s been so scared to show. “Isn’t that what you’ve been waiting for?”

“What do you mean?

“Y’know, hanging about with me. You’ve been waiting till I made a move. Or, y’know, till you managed to work up the courage to make a move on me. But if I’d let you wait for that we’d have been waiting years.”

“Charity,” Vanessa says, the heartbreak she feels at what Charity’s saying leaking through into her voice. “I’m not hanging about with you for anything, I just … I just like you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Charity says, looking at her like Vanessa’s stupid for stating the obvious. “You like me, and I’m giving you what you want.”

“I don’t — I’m not friends with you because I want to … y’know. I don’t want anything from you, Charity.”

Charity rolls her eyes. “C’mon, Ness, I know you’re a good person an’ all, but you’re no saint.”

“I’m not saying I am,” Vanessa replies, confused.

And then it clicks: Charity’s so used to everyone wanting her for something. She’s spent her whole life having people take advantage of her, only wanting to be around her to serve some sort of ulterior motive, that it doesn’t even register as a possibility in her mind that Vanessa could really just want to be her friend.

“Charity,” she says, trying her hardest to make her voice clear, even though it feels like it’s going to crack any minute. “I’m not being your friend because - because I fancy you and want to get with you and I think I have to be nice to get it. I’m not. I just … I just want us to be friends, alright?”

Now, it’s Charity’s turn to look confused. Her brow furrows and she stays silent for a few minutes, as if she’s trying to work out a particularly complicated maths problem in her head. “I don’t get it,” she says. “If you fancy me, why wouldn’t you want to kiss me? I mean, even if that isn’t why you’re my friend in the first place, why would you pass that up?”

Vanessa pinches the bridge of her nose. “Because  _ you _ don’t want it. I mean, you just said you were only doing it because you think it’s what I want.”

“Yeah, but … I don’t get why you’d turn down that opportunity. If someone  _ I _ liked kissed me, I wouldn’t be caring about why they did it, I’d just be kissing back.”

Vanessa blushes. She can’t help but imagine what would happen if she didn’t push Charity away — how it would have felt to kiss back, to let Charity kiss her for longer. It’s awful, the way that her stomach swoops at the memory. She wants to tear it apart, wants to dismantle it completely, because she knows it’s going to plague her for months now, in the middle of the night and when she’s watching Charity from across the class and when she’s pretending not to notice how close they’re sitting when they’re eating their lunch.

“Well, we’re very different people,” she says. She looks around the room desperately trying to find a distraction, and sighs in relief when she sees a small telly on Charity’s set of drawers. “Right, let’s see what’s on telly, then.”

Charity, to her credit, drops it. They lie back on the bed, very carefully not touching, and watch hours worth of game shows and sitcoms and shitty kids’ shows. Lisa brings their tea up at some point, two takeaway containers of chips and curry sauce, and leaves them to shout at the woman on the telly who seems unable to get very easy answers. By the end of the night, they’re practically cuddling, curled together under the duvet, legs tangled.

“So,” Charity says, when they’ve settled on a rerun of  _ Full House.  _ “You’ve fancied me for years and you don’t want to get off with me?”

Vanessa visibly cringes. “Can we  _ not _ talk about that?”

“Why not?” Charity asks, teasing smile on her face. “I think it’s cute.”

“It’s  _ embarrassing, _ ” Vanessa corrects.

“It’s nice,” Charity says. “Knowing that you just like me without wanting anything from me. That you just like me for me. Nobody’s ever liked me for me before.”

“Well, they’re idiots, then, aren’t they?” Vanessa replies, because they are, she knows it. She doesn’t get why everyone doesn’t like Charity (although, saying that, she sort of does — she  _ does _ have a bit of a terrifying, hard persona).

“Obviously,” Charity says, smiling softly. She cuddles closer into Vanessa’s side, resting her head on her shoulder. “And, y’know, if you ever wanna …” The implication of her words are clear, and make Vanessa squirm. “I’m still down. You know where to find me.”

Vanessa knows she’s probably just saying it to wind her up, but her stomach still soars.


	4. fourteen years old - part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa revisits her past, with a little help from Charity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi !!! I know this is probably 10 months too late but I've finally got an update for this!! djfdskafnd
> 
> I won't lie and say that there's any real reason this is so late except for the fact that I've had a lot going on in my life in the past 10 months that caused my inspiration to completely plummet for... well, 10 months. But it seems to be back! Or at least enough for me to write this. Not entirely sure that anyone bar Char still remembers this fic but if you do then I guess it's your lucky day.
> 
> uhh some things to note: half of this chapter was written some time between like, January to the start of May, so before Ryan came into the show. because of this, he's not part of the fic and it's too late to add him in now anyway, so for the sake of this fic, it's only Debbie. Also the mention to Charity's dad was written about six months before he came onto the show but I don't think it really affects the chapter cus it's suuuper fleeting.
> 
> also i know this AN has already been disgustingly long but if you like to listen to music while u read i literally cannot recommend i wanna be your girlfriend by girl in red more !! it fits this fic soooo perfectly like it's acc scary
> 
> fingers crossed that the fact this chapter alone is longer than the entire fic up until this point somehow softens the blow of the 10 month wait between updates?

After that, things change. Not really, to be fair — Vanessa reckons she’s probably making most of it up in her head. But Charity seems to act … well, not strangely, but just differently. She distances herself a bit physically, distances herself a bit emotionally, even if they do still spend near enough every waking moment together.

Vanessa thinks it’s probably for her benefit, and it’s sweet in its own Charity-like way. She doesn’t know how to comfort her properly, doesn’t know what she can do, so she pulls herself away from the situation, gives Vanessa space to breathe.

She’s grateful — really, she is. Charity’s come so far, it’s hard to believe that the girl giving her space to get over herself is the same girl that used to make fun of her at any chance. And in some ways the space is nice, it helps, but in other ways, the silence sometimes feels like it’s smothering her. It’s like she can acutely feel the distance between them, even when they’re sitting beside each other at the cafe, slurping down chocolate milkshakes and doing their homework.

She never mentions it. If she did, Charity would without a doubt stop. She’d probably overcompensate if anything — get all touchy feely, invade Vanessa’s personal space in the way that she always used to. Sometimes she wants that back, wants Charity to bump into her on purpose and lay her hand on Vanessa’s under the table just because, but she knows it’s probably for the best she doesn’t.

Doesn’t stop the raging crush she still has on her, but still. She appreciates the thought.

She realises one day, when they’re sprawled across Charity’s bed flicking through old photo albums, that she hasn’t thought about her dad in a while now. Quite a while, actually. She’d given up hope on actually getting any contact from him after he missed her birthday for the second year in a row.

Charity’s reminiscing in her own Charity way, cursing the photos of her and her parents while she runs her finger over the outline of her father, big and bulky and such an obvious presence. Her mother’s small, weedy, with shoulder-length mousy brown hair and blue eyes. Charity stands in between them, so small Vanessa almost doesn’t recognise her. Her hair’s brunette like her mum’s and she’s smiling so wide Vanessa reckons her face must have ached. She’s missing two front teeth and she must only be about six years old and Vanessa can feel her heart breaking when she sees the tears collecting in Charity’s eyes as she stares at the photo. It’s almost as if she thinks that if she stares at it hard enough the memories and the heartache that comes with them will cease to exist.

Charity would never fess up to missing them, but Vanessa knows she does. She’s seen the longing looks at the photos Zak keeps framed, seen the way that she always clings on to Lisa’s hugs a little too tight, seen the way that she averts her eyes when she sees all the girls in their year hugging their parents goodbye in the morning at the car. It’s why Vanessa’s so glad that Charity has Zak and Lisa, why she’s so glad that she has people who love and support her even when her own parents refuse to.

“What about your dad then, eh?” Charity asks, clearing her throat when it wavers. Vanessa doesn’t mention it, but she edges just that little bit closer to Charity, almost like a silent message.  _ I’m here if you need me. _

Vanessa watches as Charity turns the page and reveals a blurry, dimly-lit photo taken of what must have been their old living room. Charity and Chas are in the foreground of the photo and Cain’s stretched across a sofa behind them. Charity’s arm is wrapped around Chas’ neck, pulling her in for a tight hug, and they’ve both got big grins stretched wide. She keeps her eyes on the photo, on the look Cain’s giving Charity, on the smear of jam on Chas’ top, on the toast crumbs on Charity’s face. She doesn’t look up because she knows Charity’s watching her, trying to log her reactions, trying to see if her father is an off limits topic or not.

Vanessa doesn’t even know herself anymore.

“What about him?” she asks. She tries to keep her tone light, but the words get caught in the back of her throat and she has to push them out.

“How come he’s not around?”

She knows Charity’s not asking to pry, but it still makes her feel weird all the same. She’s not used to Charity asking things, to Charity wanting to know about her. They’ve been friends for a good year now and yet she doesn’t think Charity really knows anything about her, or at least nothing important. She knows all the little things — her favourite colour and her middle name and how she got that jagged little scar on her knee — but nothing big, not really.

She doesn’t know if it’s because Charity never thought to ask or because she never thought to tell, but she doesn’t really want to think about it for too long because then she reckons that’ll probably open a whole other can of worms that she really just wants to keep shut.

“Dunno, really,” she answers eventually. “He just … left. One day he was there, and then the next he wasn’t. Just didn’t come home.”

“Oh, right,” Charity says, voice suddenly tight. She sounds uncomfortable, like she hadn’t been expecting Vanessa to actually answer, like she doesn’t know how to respond now that she has. It makes the space between them feel all that smaller, makes the millions of miles that have separated them since the kissing incident turn into none at all.

“He phoned, eventually,” she says, swallowing the lump in her throat that always comes from talking about her dad for too long. “Said he was sorry, he never wanted to hurt us. Didn’t matter in the end.”

“Have you seen him? Since he left.”

“Yeah, once,” she says. “He took me out for tea and we went to the shops and the beach. It was … nice.”

Vanessa can remember it like it was yesterday. She was twelve, and it was a day in the beginning of March. There was a sliver of sunlight peeking out from the clouds, but the streets were still full of slush and the remains of snow; spring was slowly waving goodbye to winter, dragging the process out. It was freezing cold, but she’d forgotten her hat and scarf at home in the rush to meet her dad, so her face was tinged pink all day.

The beach was cold and dreary, and the tide was too far out to properly walk on it — she was stuck climbing over rocks and holding onto her dad’s arm. He was fidgety all day, wiry and on edge, as if constantly afraid of being caught doing something he shouldn’t have been, but Vanessa had found it easy enough to look over, just happy to be back in his presence. It was a miserable day, but she’d just been so happy to see him again that she didn’t care.

At the end of the day, he drove her back to the village and hugged her goodbye on her doorstep and promised her he’d come back to see her again soon. She’d believed him so readily, had waited eagerly for his return for months after that. It still makes her feel sick to think how much she trusted him — how he broke that trust completely, smashed it into a million pieces with a sledgehammer and never once looked back.

“I’m sorry, Ness,” Charity says. She leans over and rests her head on Vanessa’s shoulder, propping her chin up on it. “He’s shit. He doesn’t deserve you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Vanessa says, even though she’s always been unsure. “Neither does yours — wasn’t your fault what happened.”

Charity snorts. “Yeah, well, I think I did play at least a bit of a part in it. Takes two to tango, an’ all.”

“Yeah, but it’s hardly fair that nobody’s give Cain any stick for it and you’re like, the pariah of the family.”

“Oh, thanks,” Charity says with a scowl.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” Charity says. Her voice goes quiet again, like she’s just remembered all over again. Vanessa wishes she could take away any bit of pain that Charity’s ever felt. The thought makes her stomach tighten uncomfortably, like she’s in trouble and she’s about to face the consequences. “And anyway, they’ve not given Cain any stick for it because they don’t know it was Cain’s. Don’t know …  _ she _ was Cain’s.”

Vanessa’s confused at that one. “What, really?” Charity nods. “Well, who do they think was the dad?”

Charity gives a sad little half-shrug. Her eyes are glazed over, like she’s trying to detach herself from the conversation, from the memories that come with it. “Dunno, some randomer, probably. I just told them it was some boy from school and they didn’t care enough to ask any more.”

“But … but Cain knows, right?”

Charity stiffens. She moves away, shifting off of Vanessa’s body. Vanessa regrets the question immediately and curses herself for taking it too far, for breaking one of Charity’s boundaries. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Charity says, voice holding an edge it didn’t before, as if she thinks Vanessa will challenge her on it.

“Yeah, no, of - of course. Sorry.”

Charity gets up, sliding off the bed. She picks the photo album up and slams it shut, shoving it back on the shelf she picked it up from — out of sight, out of mind. She moves over to the corkboard tacked onto her wall and begins distracting herself by looking at the photos on it. They’re all newer than the ones in the album — photos of Charity and Chas, of the whole Dingle clan, even a photo of Vanessa and Charity.

“Do you know where he is now?” she asks, pulling the photo of her and Vanessa off of the board. She picks at the blu tack stuck to the back of the photo and begins scraping at it with her nail, busying herself so she doesn’t have to make eye contact. It’s one of Charity’s nervous tics, she’s realised: making herself busy enough that she doesn’t have to face anything uncomfortable.

“Erm… yeah. Sort of.” When Charity looks at her briefly in confusion, eyebrow raised as if asking to elaborate, she lets out a shaky sigh. “He forgot to leave the return address off a postcard once. Or, I mean, maybe it was on purpose. But I doubt it. I don’t even know if he still lives there.”

Charity’s eyes light up. She puts the photo down on her bedside table and rushes over to the bed, crouching down to the floor so she’s eye level with Vanessa. “Let’s go find him.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow!” she exclaims. “We’ll go to his house. Where is it?”

“What?”

“Your dad, where does he live?”

“Erm, Manchester, but —”

“Great!” Charity says. She’s a little bit too loud, a little bit too bright. “Well, we’ll go then. Get the bus. It’s only Manchester, it can’t take  _ that  _ long.”

“But what about school?”

Charity rolls her eyes and sighs, but she’s smiling, like she’s charmed by Vanessa nonetheless. It makes her stomach flutter against its own will, the way that Charity can have such a tight grip on her when she’s not even doing anything at all.

“We’ve bunked off before, Ness,” she says. “I’ll just get Cain to phone in and say you’re not coming.”

“We can’t do that!”

She sometimes wonders how her and Charity are friends. Charity’s so fearless, so up for anything, and she’s the near opposite. She thinks they probably never would have become friends if they met now, but then again, she’s not sure how they even became friends in the first place.

“Sure we can,” she says. “He does it for me all the time.”

“Well, yeah, but I can’t ask him to do that.”

She doesn’t mention the part about not wanting Cain to do that, about not wanting Cain to come anywhere near her, about not wanting Cain to ever come anywhere near Charity again. It probably wouldn’t go down too well, not with Charity who somehow still manages to think the world of the cousin who knocked her up and got off scot-free.

Charity rolls her eyes affectionately. “You don’t have to. I’ll ask him.”

She tries to protest more, but it’s clear Charity’s made up her mind on it, and well, that’s that. Sometimes she wishes she was stronger, that she didn’t give into Charity’s every wish and whim, but she knows that she’d do anything asked of her if Charity pushed hard enough.

Charity plans the day out for them, speaking a mile a minute about the buses they’ll need to catch, how long they’ll have to walk, what she’ll have to tell her mum in the morning before she leaves. It’s like she’s spiralling out of control, wrapping herself round and round and round herself, getting so tangled in all of her ideas and plans Vanessa’s not sure she’ll ever be able to straighten her out again.

There’s something there, something more than wanting Vanessa to give her dad a piece of her mind, that she doesn’t seem willing to own up to. And Vanessa wants to know, wants to be able to help, but she doesn’t know how to ask, so she leaves it. She figures maybe Charity will tell her when she’s ready, and if she doesn’t, then there’s probably a reason.

She hardly gets a wink of sleep, far too preoccupied with tossing and turning, mind going into overdrive thinking up all the things that could go wrong. She knows there’s no point in worrying, not really — when Charity gets an idea in her head she sticks to it, no matter what — but it doesn’t stop her from anyway. She thinks that says a lot about her and Charity’s friendship — Charity says jump and every time she asks how high.

When she wakes in the morning, she carefully packs her bag — school books stuffed in a box under her bed where her mum never looks; a tshirt and a pair of jeans and Charity’s hoodie stuffed into her schoolbag along with her purse — and changes into her school uniform. She avoids her mum all morning, dashing upstairs as soon as she finishes her breakfast and barely stopping to give her a hug goodbye before she’s ducking out of the door and walking as fast as she can to meet Charity at the bus stop.

They get the bus into Hotten just like any other morning, tucked away beside each other in two seats near the back. They’re packed in tight, arms overlapping as they try their hardest to sit comfortably, and Vanessa detests the fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach, tries her hardest to swallow it down. They’re surrounded by swarms of their schoolmates, but Charity leads her off the bus four stops before school like it’s what they were meant to do all along. Vanessa keeps her head ducked down as she trails behind Charity, not allowing herself to make eye contact with their staring peers, but Charity walks with hers held high.

They change out of their school uniform in the bus station bathrooms, cramped together in the disabled stall, and Vanessa’s heart beats away far too quickly as she tries her hardest not to watch Charity changing out of her school shirt into the t-shirt she’d picked out. She can feel Charity’s eyes on her as she unbuttons her shirt with shaky hands. It feels like her gaze is burning into Vanessa’s back, and Vanessa knows that it’s purposeful, that Charity’s probably doing it to elicit a reaction from her, but she can’t help herself from falling into it every time.

Their journey is relatively calm, consisting mostly of comfortable silence, Charity napping on Vanessa’s shoulder and hushed conversations in the back of the bus. When they arrive in Manchester, Charity is drooling into Vanessa’s hair, and despite what all the romcoms and slowburn TV romances would have you believe, Vanessa actually just finds it all a bit vile. She shakes Charity awake as soon as she sees the signs welcoming them, anxiety swelling in her chest at the thought of Charity sleeping through their stop and her not knowing where to get off.

Charity’s irritable when she wakes up, brow knitted in an infuriatingly adorable scowl. Her hair’s all staticy, messy from where her head had slipped and slid all over Vanessa’s shoulder as she slept. Vanessa stares at the sight so hard that her eyes start to glaze over, and she only snaps herself out of it when Charity starts directing her pout at Vanessa rather than just in general. It’s moments like these that Vanessa wishes she should capture and keep forever, those when Charity’s so natural and carefree and just …  _ Charity.  _ Moments that she knows are invaluable but she’ll never get back.

She doesn’t tell her that, of course. That’s the kind of statement that straightens Charity out, that turns her from soft curves to hard edges. Vanessa doesn’t really understand why, but she stays tight-lipped anyway.

“Right, this next stop’s us,” Charity says as the bus twists around a corner. She’s tapping her foot against the ground anxiously, two front teeth sunk into her bottom lip. She rests her hand on the pole, thumb ghosting the stop button, staring out the window like a hawk, doing everything she can to make sure she doesn’t miss it.

“You sure?” Vanessa asks. Charity nods away absentmindedly, too focused on the task at hand to properly reply.

Vanessa shrugs her schoolbag back on, shifting uncomfortably at the weight of all of their clothes against her back. Her chest tightens as Charity slams her thumb against the stop button almost out of nowhere, the sound ringing in her ears like an alarm bell. Charity shoots up in her seat and practically drags Vanessa off the bus by the arm, grip just that bit too tight. She pulls her off the bus without even acknowledging the driver, and Vanessa barely has a second to shout a quick thank you over her shoulder before the bus is speeding away again.

There’s a moment of silence as Charity attempts to sort herself out — pulling her hair out from where it had ended up tucked into her shirt; straightening her clothes out in an attempt to look presentable; attempting to flatten the lion’s mane that is now her hair — that Vanessa takes to ground herself.

They’re here in Manchester, finally, and she thinks that everything’s supposed to feel right now, that all of her anxieties are supposed to have settled. They made it here in one piece with near enough no trouble, they didn’t miss any of their stops, they’re both still getting on perfectly fine … despite all of this, despite all the good that Vanessa can pluck from the situation, her stomach still has that awful scratching feeling in it, like someone’s scraping nails against the pit of her gut and doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon.

“Are you ready?” Charity asks, smile plastered on her face.

Vanessa tightens her grip on the straps of her schoolbag and pulls it closer against her body. “Yeah, let’s go.” She gives Charity a shaky smile, one that’s reciprocated with the same warm look that Vanessa’s come to learn is reserved solely for her. “You do know where we’re going, right?”

Charity’s jaw drops open in fake horror as they start to walk, clutching her hand over her chest in a dramatic attempt to appear affronted. “Vanessa Woodfield, are you seriously doubting me and my amazing, top of the line navigation skills? I’m hurt.”

The familiarity of Charity’s silliness loosens the knot on the anchor wrapped around Vanessa’s chest, and finally, she feels like she can breathe. She rolls her eyes, throwing her hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry, sorry, of course not. I would  _ never. _ ”

“Glad to hear it,” Charity says, knocking her hip against Vanessa’s in that horribly familiar way that makes her heart ache. “‘Cus if I hear that you’ve been mouthing off I won’t be impressed.”

“I’d have to actually tell people that we’d been off skiving to Manchester to do that, wouldn’t I?” Her smile takes up an uncomfortably large portion of her face, and she knows that she must be so, so obvious, but she can hardly stop the way her heart leaps every time Charity returns that same kind of smile. “And I mean, I don’t know about you or anything, but I can’t see me doing that any time soon.”

“Nah, me neither,” Charity says. They’ve fallen into a comfortable pace now, Charity leading Vanessa through unfamiliar street after unfamiliar street as if she knows it like the back of her hand. “Don’t you worry, you’ll be on the other side of the law with me before you know it. I’ll make a Dingle of you yet.”

Vanessa reckons she short-circuits a little bit at that, and if the smug look on Charity’s face is anything to go off of, she definitely knows the effect her words have had. They walk in a peaceful silence for a little while, Vanessa too stunned to think up any kind of reply to Charity’s comment, but stop when Charity suddenly comes to a grinding halt.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Er, nothing, I’m just … wait a sec, yeah?”

Vanessa’s forced to wait as Charity leans against someone’s garden wall and rifles through her schoolbag, which she clearly hadn’t cleared of her school stuff in preparation for their trip (although, saying that, Vanessa highly doubts how much actual school stuff Charity has in there on a normal school day), for something that she seems destined to never find. She’s about to cut in when Charity lets out a little triumphant shriek, producing a crumpled piece of paper from the depths of her bag and waving it around in the air like it’s the last clue on a scavenger hunt and she’s just won first place.

“What’s that?” Vanessa asks, brow furrowed in confusion as she tries to make out what Charity’s looking at from over her shoulder.

Charity doesn’t reply, however. Instead, she stays focused on whatever it is she’s looking at, eyes narrowing as she scrutinises every inch of the paper for whatever it is she’s looking for. Vanessa’s beyond impatient by the time she finally looks up, confident smile firmly back in place almost like it never left.

“Right, let’s go.” She grabs Vanessa’s wrist and pulls her back into action and lets her hand linger for a second too long, even after they’ve started walking again. Vanessa’s heart slams away at her chest as Charity’s fingers brush over hers, and she has to do everything in her power to not link them together, to not let their fingers slot into place around the other as if that’s how they were always meant to walk.

She pulls away after a few minutes, unable to focus on where she’s going with all those thoughts swirling around in her head, determined not to leave her alone. “What was that you were looking at?” she asks, voice slightly shaky.

“Oh, nothing,” Charity tries to say, shrugging in an attempt to appear nonchalant, but before she can even get all her words out, Vanessa’s made a dive towards her pocket where she’d stuffed it.

They tug at each other for a few minutes as if they’re not standing in the middle of the pavement, Vanessa scrabbling away at Charity’s pockets desperately. Charity squeals loudly as Vanessa finally gets a grip of the paper in question, and there’s a quick battle for it before Vanessa ducks under her arm and runs a little bit up the path.

“A map of Manchester?” she asks incredulously when she finally gets a proper look at it. “Charity, you told me you knew where we were going!”

“I do!” Charity insists, snatching it back out of Vanessa’s hands. “I was just a bit confused, alright?”

“And now?”

“And now - look, Vanessa, you have to trust me, yeah? Let’s go.”

They walk aimlessly for another five minutes, Vanessa hanging behind Charity and shooting daggers at her back, before —

She’s sure she’s seen that house before.  _ And _ that bright yellow fence, and the little statue of the dog in that garden.

_ "Charity _ _!”_ she shrieks, voice shrill enough and high-pitched enough that Charity visibly winces. “We’ve been here already. We’re going in circles.”

“What are you - don’t be silly, Ness, we’re not …” She doesn’t finish her sentence, eyes scanning their surroundings so intensely it’s almost like she’s willing it to be unfamiliar terrain. “Oh, fuck.”

Vanessa gives Charity her worst death stare before setting her jaw and crossing her arms over her chest. “Right, well you’re going to have to ask someone for directions.”

“Eh? Don’t be stupid, Ness.”

“Me, stupid?  _ I’m  _ not the one that lied about knowing their way around Manchester only to get lost because I actually don’t have a clue!”

“Excuse me!” Charity exclaims, voice raised just that little bit too loud for their public surroundings. They can feel the heads turning, all eyes on the two teenage girls having a domestic in the middle of the morning down some random Mancunian estate when they’re meant to be in school. “I didn’t  _ lie, _ thank you very much; I did know my way - I  _ do _ know my way, it’s just been a little longer than I thought since I was around here.”

“Well, that’s not my issue, is it?”

They bicker between themselves for several minutes before Vanessa spots what looks to be a kind old man approaching them, a carrier bag in each hand. She thrusts Charity in front of him, kicking her in the back of the shins when she doesn’t say anything at first. Eventually, Charity grits her teeth and asks him if he knows how they can get to Vanessa’s dad’s in the nicest voice she can muster, and after having a back and forth with the man about why they aren’t in school and receiving a whole spiel about acceptable public conduct, Charity’s got directions scribbled on the back of her map in his scrawly old man handwriting.

They set off again, neither saying a word to the other. The tension is palpable, sinking deep into Vanessa’s bones so much that it exhausts her, and she’s beginning to consider whether they should just sack it all off now and call it a day before things get even worse when Charity speaks up again.

“I’m doing this for you, y’know,” she says, an edge to her voice that wasn’t there before, one that has panic swelling in Vanessa’s chest all over again. “We’re coming to see  _ your _ dad. I didn’t have to sort all this.”

“I never asked you to!” Vanessa exclaims, exasperated and exhausted by this point. “It was all what you wanted, never me! You didn’t even ask me if I wanted to see him, you just pushed pushed pushed like always!”

Charity’s eyes darken and Vanessa winces. She knows she’s went too far this time, knows that if the line was a thing that physically existed it would be miles behind her by now. She tries to reach out and stop Charity, but she jumps back as if she’s been burnt when Vanessa makes contact with her.

“Fine,” she says, voice hard. “If that’s how you feel then I won’t bother at all.” She shoves the map into Vanessa’s hands forcefully, turning back around to walk away. “Good luck, Vanessa.”

She starts speedwalking away in the other direction, and Vanessa has to practically run just to catch up with her. She grabs at Charity’s arm, yanking her back by her elbow. “Charity, I didn’t mean it like —”

“Yeah, you did,” Charity interjects.

“No, honestly, I - it came out wrong.” She takes a deep breath in an attempt to calm her nerves. “I am grateful, honest. And I do want to see my dad, I just - it’s all just a bit much, yeah? I’m sorry for taking it out on you.”

Charity pauses for a second, gaze casted up to the sky, before letting out a sigh and rolling her eyes. “Fine,” she says, the ends of her lips turning up ever so slightly. “I suppose I’ll forgive you. Just this once, mind. And if you go about telling people I’ve gone soft then I’ll take it back.”

Vanessa only beams back at her, linking their arms together in perhaps her bravest move of the day. “I would never.”

They walk and walk and walk, so much so that Vanessa fears her feet are going to fall off before they ever actually make it to her dad’s, following the directions the old man had given them. It’s another good forty minutes or so before they finally approach the street in question - one that’s spent walking arm in arm the whole way, the two of them talking between themselves in hushed tones, giggling like they’re eleven again.

Vanessa starts to slow as they walk up the street, getting closer and closer to the house that’s possibly her dad’s. She’s not even sure if he still lives here, if he’ll even recognise her, if he’ll want to see her if he does. She’s not even sure that she wants to see him if it is him. She guesses she just wants to know the truth, no matter what that turns out to be.

When they finally reach the right house, Charity unlinks their arms in favour of taking Vanessa’s hand. Normally, she’d be internally freaking out at this gesture, but right now all she can think to do is squeeze as tight as she can.

“No matter what happens,” Charity says quietly, brushing her thumb across Vanessa’s knuckles, “you’ve got me, yeah? I’ll be right there with you.”

It’s exactly the kind of soppy stuff that Charity detests the most, and if anything that just makes Vanessa even  _ more _ emotional because here she is with this amazing human being as her best friend and yet she’s still here in search of more.

They walk up to the door together, and when Vanessa can’t bring herself to knock with her free hand, too shaky to do any real good, Charity sucks in a sharp breath and raps her knuckles against the door three times. When the door opens, they’re met with a sight that shocks Vanessa so much it causes her to stumble backwards, losing grip of Charity’s hand:

Vanessa’s dad stood in the doorway wearing an apron with a tea towel draped over his right shoulder and a toddler resting on his hip.

When he sees her, he begins blinking rapidly, almost as if he can’t believe his eyes. “Teeny,” he says, the nickname foreign to her ears. “What are you doing here?”

“I … I just wanted to …” She can’t get her words out, too occupied with flicking her gaze from her dad to the baby to her dad back to the baby over and over, like a stuttering CD stuck on loop. Fresh tears sting at her eyes, and she refuses to blink them down her face in front of him, refuses to let him see her crumble. She turns back around and grabs Charity’s wrist, half dragging her back down the path. “Charity, let’s go,” she demands.

“Ness, are you —”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she practically growls out. “I got what I came for, now let’s  _ go. _ ”

Charity doesn’t need to be told twice and lets Vanessa guide her down the garden path. Vanessa’s just reaching out to open the gate when Charity feels a body barging past her shoulder, knocking her slightly off kilter. Vanessa’s dad wedges himself between her and the gate, stopping them from leaving. Charity pushes Vanessa aside instinctively, protective streak gripping onto her like a vice as she makes sure there’s no way for him to touch her.

“Teeny, please,” he says, eyes cartoonishly wide. The kid in his arms stretches out, making a noise of protest, presumably at the cold air now nipping at her cheeks. Vanessa makes eye contact with her, the kid’s beady little eyes staring right back up at her in intrigue, but looks away almost immediately.

She shakes her head to herself, trying her hardest to not let herself be distracted by the …  _ thing, _ in her dad’s arms, that looks painfully like she did in all the baby photos her mum keeps in the attic.  _ Focus, _ she tells herself.

“Don’t call me that,” she bites out, but she doesn’t try any harder to get out. She’s pushed against Charity’s shoulder, her arm stretched out across Vanessa’s stomach protectively, hand brushing her hip bone. It feels nice, Vanessa thinks - to have someone watching out for her.

“Okay, okay,” her dad acquiesces, holding his free hand up in surrender. “ _ Vanessa, _ ” he says, putting emphasis on her name. “Will you please just come inside for a little bit?” His tone is pleading, desperate, and Vanessa’s not ashamed to say that it sends a rush of confidence coursing through her veins — he  _ should _ be desperate. “Your … friend can come in too,” he adds hastily when he makes eye contact with Charity, standing with her eyes narrowed and her teeth bared.

She doesn’t say anything, but she lets him guide them inside. The kid looks over his shoulder, drooling onto his shirt as she stares curiously back at Charity and Vanessa with her mouth agape. Something about it makes Vanessa reach out for Charity’s hand, scrabbling to hold onto anything familiar. Charity links their fingers and squeezes tight, the one sign of comfort she knows she can’t mess up, and follows her inside.

The house is nice - it reminds her a little bit of their house in Leeds, if she’s being honest. It’s certainly not a castle of any sorts, but the wallpaper’s a pretty pattern and the cream carpets match it perfectly and there’s family photo after family photo after family photo lining the walls, and -

It’s nice. It’s a perfect little family house. Vanessa feels like she’s intruding, like she’s just barged in on something that was never meant for her to see.

“Do you want something to drink?” her dad asks after he’s set the kid down in her playpen, rubbing his hands together anxiously. “Tea, coffee? We’ve got other stuff if you —”

“Don’t worry about that,” Charity says, painfully forced smile on her face. “I’ll deal with that while you two talk, yeah?” Vanessa gives her a panicked look, but Charity just smiles back at her, a hint of genuinity shining through this time. “You’ll be fine, babe,” she says in a lowered tone, quiet enough so that Frank (probably) can’t hear it. “I’ll be just through there.”

She doesn’t wait for Frank to tell her what he takes in his tea, leaving the room as quick as they’d come in as soon as Vanessa gives her a little nod of agreement. Vanessa lingers by the door awkwardly even as Frank settles himself down on the sofa, not quite knowing what to do with herself without Charity to follow after.

“Come, sit down,” he says, patting the seat beside him. Resentment swells in her chest at the idea of this near stranger telling her what to do, but the other part of her, the little girl inside her, positively melts at the familiar sound of her dad’s voice, smooth like marble and so calming to her ears.

There’s a heavy silence for a while, the only sounds being the baby’s gurgling and the sound of Charity making the tea, spoon beating away at the cup almost violently. The sound brings a small smile to Vanessa’s face, at the way Charity doesn’t try and change or mute herself even in an unfamiliar situation like this. The smile is quickly replaced with a grimace when she makes eye contact with her dad yet again.

“How did you find me?” he asks eventually. Vanessa knows he’s just asking out of curiosity, but something in her flares up with anger, because she didn’t  _ find  _ him, he practically sent her looking.

“Return address on an old postcard,” she spits out. “Should be more careful next time.”

“Tee -  _ Vanessa, _ I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighs. “It’s nice to see you.”

She folds in on herself, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. She doesn’t say it back even though she knows that’s what he’s looking for, because she’s not a liar, and it’s not nice to see him. She’s the one who went looking for him, but now she wishes she hadn’t, wishes she’d left him be and left their lives separate. If she’d just told Charity no, said she didn’t want to see him, then she never would have ended up here, staring down a photo of her dad and some unfamiliar woman holding a baby that looks too much like her.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? She never has been able to say no to Charity.

“How was the journey he-”

“Why did you leave?”

He sighs, like he’d been expecting it. “Vanessa -”

“Why did you leave?” she repeats.

“We’ve been over this,” he says. And they have, she supposes, but only when she was twelve, and even then, it didn’t really add up. “It was … it was complicated. Me and your mum, we-”

“Was it because of her?” She nods towards the playpen where the kid is standing up, chewing on a toy of some sort. “Did you leave because - because you got some other woman pregnant?”

The look on his face tells her all she needs to know. And it’s not like it’s a surprise, not really, because her dad’s always been sort of slimy, but she supposes it’s the last straw, really. The last tie cut on all her good memories of him, on all the hope she’s secretly harboured over the past three years that he might still be a good guy after all, that this was all just one big mistake, misunderstanding.

“Ness, it sounds way worse than it is.” The nickname sounds wrong coming from his mouth. Vanessa wants to take it back, wants to protest and tell him that it belongs to Charity and Charity only, but there’s no point in it.

“I don’t see how that could sound any way but bad.”

“Yeah, okay,” he sighs. “You’re right, it can’t.”

And it’s just like - nothing fits anymore. Once upon a time this would have felt  _ right, _ this would have been all she’d ever dreamed of coming true, but now it’s like she’s sitting across from a complete stranger. He’s familiar, somewhere inside of her — his face and his voice have stayed the same, still make her feel sickeningly at home, but everything else is just … foreign.

She’s pulled from her thoughts by the sound of mugs clinking as Charity pushes her way into the living room with her shoulder. One of the mugs says  _ World’s Best Dad  _ on it in faded lettering, and Vanessa knows that Charity’s not the kind of person who reads mugs before picking them, but it just solidifies something inside her:

This is not her dad. This is not her life. The person that she was once - the daddy’s girl, the apple of his eye, Vanessa  _ Clayton _ \- doesn’t exist anymore. And she knows that she doesn’t have to stay, that she doesn’t owe him anything, but, she figures, what can it hurt?

Charity hands her her mug and practically shoves her dad’s into his hands. As she’s pulling back, ready to go get her own from the kitchen, she mouths a small  _ are you okay?  _ at Vanessa. All she can do is nod, giving her the most convincing smile she can muster.

Usually when they’re around other people, she’s hyper aware of how she acts around Charity - too afraid to make too much eye contact, too afraid to sit too close. She’s so scared that her feelings are obvious, so sure that she wears them like an obnoxiously loud badge on her sleeve for everyone to see, that she does her utmost to suppress them around everyone that might ever suspect. She does her best to bite them down when they’re alone too, mind, but Charity knows anyway and she doesn’t care, and despite how scary it is, there’s something so comforting in that to Vanessa.

With her dad, however, she doesn’t care if he sees. She lets herself smile for that second longer than she normally would, lets her gaze follow Charity as she potters back into the kitchen. She doesn’t think he’d be the kind of person to care either way, or at least not from what she knew of him when he was in her life, but she realises that even if he does care, she’s not particularly bothered by his opinion.

It’s freeing.

Charity’s just coming back into the living room when the baby starts crying. Vanessa gets up on some sort of instinct even before Frank does, but Charity shakes her head, putting her mug down on a coaster. “I’ll get her,” she says. “You two chat.”

“Oh, no, that’s alright,” Frank tries to say, but Charity’s having none of it. She’s already scooping the kid up into her arms, looking what Frank probably thinks is at ease but Vanessa knows is painfully uncomfortable.

“Nah, seriously,” she says, tight smile back in place. “Got loads of kids in the family, don’t I, Ness? She’ll be fine.”

He looks at Vanessa, as if waiting for her confirmation, and all she can stutter out is, “Er, yeah, she’s … Big family.” She turns back to face Charity, now sitting on the other sofa with the kid bouncing on her knee. “You sure you’re okay?” she asks Charity, eyeing the baby like she’s something to be scared of.

“Ness,” Charity says in the voice that Vanessa knows means there’s no arguing to be had. “I’m fine.”

When she turns back to her dad, he’s looking between the two of them determinedly, like he’s trying to figure out something he’s got half worked out in his head. It sends a familiar jolt of anxiety through her veins, but she finds that she almost wants to dare him to work it out. It’s … interesting, not caring about someone’s opinion for once. Scary enough to make her buzz with adrenaline, but not so bad that she feels sick; just the right amount.

“You look so grown up, Teeny,” he says, and this time she can’t find it in herself to correct him on the nickname. If that’s what he wants to call her then fine, she reckons - not like she’ll be seeing him again after this for it to matter, anyway. “I’m sure you’ve got all the boys chasing after you.”

Ah. Makes sense now.

She can’t let but help her gaze drift back to Charity, happily babbling away to the kid like they’re best friends. She looks so gentle, so unguarded; Vanessa’s heart feels like it’s going to burst when she looks at the sight for too long. For a second, Vanessa lets herself imagine what Charity would have been like as a mum if she’d kept her baby, how she would have cared for her.

The thought is too much for even her to take, so she can’t imagine what it must feel like for Charity herself.

When she looks back at her dad after what feels like an eternity, he’s looking at her like he’s finally worked it out, like he knows the answer to his question. And, to his credit, he doesn’t say anything. He’s not looking at her any differently, not like she’s less than him or like she’s anyone other than the girl she was five minutes ago.

Then again, she thinks, he didn’t know that girl either.

“Not really,” she says, but really she means not at all, really she means boys in general sort of repulse her in a way that she thinks must not be normal for a fourteen year old girl. She clears her throat, her own mind too clouded by her anxieties over Charity and her feelings and the increasing anxiety that this might not just be some sort of phase, and blinks rapidly a few times to focus herself. “What, uh, what’s her name anyway?” she asks. “The baby.”

Frank smiles, seemingly glad to finally have a comfortable topic. “Tracy,” he says, voice full of the kind of doe-eyed adoration he used to have when he talked about her. “She’s two.”

“She’s cute,” Vanessa says, smile unconsciously forcing its way onto her face as she observes how the kid —  _ Tracy, _ laughs away happily, babbling loudly to anyone that’ll listen.

“She reminds me a lot of you at that age,” he says. “Looks like you, too.”

The moment’s over as soon as it begun. The mention of her childhood, of everything he left without looking back, snaps her back to reality. “Yeah,” she says, voice sharp again. “I’m amazed you remember.”

“Teeny, don’t be like that …”

“Like what? Honest?”

“Please,” he says, and she just doesn’t have it in her to fight anymore, so she sighs and gives in.

They make awkward chat for a while, about school and life and what she’s up to now. He shows her a few photos of Tracy - kid’s cute, she can’t deny that - and even asks a few questions about Charity, which she supposes she appreciates in a weird sort of way. She keeps expecting it to start feeling normal, for things to click into place and for the forgiveness to start happening, but it never comes.

She looks at him and sees … a dad -  _ Tracy’s  _ dad. A good one at that, probably. He seems to dote on her, just the way he used to adore Vanessa. And in some ways it hurts to see, the way that he’s clearly found in his new family what she used to be so sure he had with her and her mum, but … she looks at him and she doesn’t see her dad anymore. Just a man she used to know that has too many stories and apologies and not enough real, true effort.

“Ness,” Charity cuts in eventually after having settled Tracy back in her playpen, eyeing the clock hung above the door frame. “We better get going if we want to make our bus.”

“Oh, I can drive you to the station,” her dad interjects, too eager.

“No, that’s alright,” Vanessa says, trying her best to keep her voice firm. “You need to stay here with Tracy, anyway.”

“Honest, it’s no —”

“No. We’ll be fine,” she says in her strongest voice.

He gives her a pleading look for a few seconds before realising she’s not backing down anytime soon and sighs. “Fine,” he says. “But at least let me put you in a taxi.” She goes to object, but before she can say anything he puts a hand up to stop her. “Please, Teeny.”

She looks over at Charity, almost begging her to stand in and be the authority figure, to shut Frank down once and for all, but Charity just widens her eyes at Vanessa and shrugs. “I mean, the station  _ is _ ages away,” she says. “Not even sure we’ll have enough time to walk.”

“Exactly!” he exclaims, far too excited. “I’ll go book it now.”

Vanessa has no choice but to give in, far too tired from the days’ antics to even try and convince him otherwise. What harm can it do, anyway, she figures - might as well rinse him for some cash while she’s at it. “Oh,” she says just as he’s heading towards the phone. “Can we use your bathroom? We need to get changed back into our uniform.” He says yes because of course he does, and Vanessa can’t help but smirk at the shocked look on his face when the two of them traipse in together without a second thought, Charity locking the door behind them.

The travel back home is… fine. She can’t stop thinking about the day, replaying it in her head - the little sister she never knew existed, the big happy family her dad has now that achingly mirrors the life she once had, the way he’d kissed her cheek goodbye at the station like he knew her like that, like he knew her at all. This time, she’s the one riding the bus with her head nestled in the crook of Charity’s neck rather than the other way round, dozing off a few times to the familiar smell of Charity’s perfume.

They go straight back to Wishing Well when they get off their last bus, Vanessa’s mum already having been informed about the sleepover they’d arranged the day before. Walking into the familiar house is so comforting, so overwhelming, that Vanessa feels her eyes sting with fresh tears when Lisa offers them a brew immediately upon entering the house. They laze about in the living room with the Dingles for a while, Vanessa curled up just that little bit too close to Charity on the couch as they watch some old rerun of  _ Only Fools _ with Zak while Charity helps Lisa with her crossword.

Everything feels… safe, here. It feels like where she’s meant to be, even more than her own house with her mum and all her stuff and the little potted plant that lives on her bedroom windowsill that Charity once dubbed Norman. She doesn’t know what it is - whether it’s the constant smell of homemade food wafting from the kitchen, or the way the television’s always buzzing in the background, or whether really, it’s just because this is where Charity stays and Charity is the one true constant and safe place in her life - but something about the house makes Vanessa feel like no matter what she does, she’ll always have somewhere to come back to.

They turn into bed after their tea, Vanessa substituting pyjamas for one of Charity’s oversized t-shirts and a pair of her pyjama shorts. Charity turns on the TV and they do what they do best: lie back, relax, and shout sarcastic answers at whatever game show’s on now. Charity keeps an arm curled around Vanessa’s shoulder almost protectively, like she wants to keep her safe from the world.

“Thoughts on today, then?” she asks when they’re both drifting off, voice ridiculously cute in its sleepy state. “You gonna see him again, or?”

Vanessa shakes her head. “No, don’t think so.”

Charity yawns. “How not? I thought you were getting on well, towards the end.”

“Yeah, we were, but…” She pauses, unsure of how to articulate her thoughts. She can’t help but focus on the way Charity buries herself down under the covers, how cute she looks when she scrunches up her nose when she can’t get comfy. “It’s just not my life anymore. He’s not … He seemed really happy, with Tracy. I’m happy for her, and him, I guess. Happy she gets a dad. I don’t need one anyway, do I? I’ve done fine until now without him.”

Charity leans back and turns the lamp off, curling around Vanessa’s body when it’s completely dark, head resting in the crook of her neck like it was meant to be there the whole time. “I agree, babe,” she says, half-asleep. “Look at me, eh? I don’t have a dad and I’m doing great.”

Vanessa hums a sign of agreement and lets herself drift off to sleep, letting her body melt into Charity’s the way it always does. The last thing she thinks before she finally dozes off is that she doesn’t really think she needs anyone when she has Charity, not her dad  _ or _ anyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big fat thank you to emily for a) always putting up with my hiatus related bullshit, b) being my little cheerleader through every chapter of this fic including this one and c) being just as gassed as she was 10 months ago when i finally finished this chapter. some things never change and i know for a fact i'll never stop giving her a lil thank you at the end of my fics. also thank you to char for being my #1 fan xo
> 
> talk to me on tumblr noahdingles.tumblr.com or on twitter @charitydingles !!! pls !!

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on tumblr noahdingles.tumblr.com


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